The end of World War II was marked by the detonation of two nuclear bombs in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the explosion of the most powerful bombs and used in a conflict until then showed the world the power that could be done with nuclear weapons and from that month of August 2.
The world now had fear and ambition in having nuclear weapons and this became clear a few years later with the emergence of the Cold War that left the world on the verge of an imminent war between the two greatest powers of the time, the USA and the former USSR , but now both had nuclear bombs.
However, a nuclear weapon is not created from nothing and used against a country, some tests are necessary beforehand and here we enter the curiosity that we bring to you, something very curious about the Manhattan Project (American project for the creation of the nuclear bomb that would eventually be released in Japanese cities).
Testing a nuclear weapon in an open space was complicated, but yes, it has happened and there are videos of it on the internet. However, the military and scientists at the time did not want to waste plutonium, which was very expensive at the time and still is.
So what was the solution? Well, a large cylinder was created, 7,62 meters long, 3,05 meters in diameter, walls 35,6 cm thick of pure steel, total weight 194 tons and was given the name Jumbo, yes the same nickname of the Boeing 747 icon.
The idea was to detonate the bomb near the Jumbo that would be a kind of containment and the unused plutonium would be reused. The strange idea was put to the test, but another problem arose: How to take the Jumbo that weighed 194 tons to a desert that was 2500 km from the test site?
The way they managed was to build a vehicle with 64 wheels specially designed to transport the equipment.
Explosion and result:
Arrived at the test site, the Jumbo was hung from a vertical tower and finally the bomb was detonated, with the strong explosion everyone expected total destruction, but only the tower that held the equipment was completely destroyed, the Jumbo had only one dent.
The result was the abandonment of the Jumbo, which was only changed at the end of the 2nd World War and was destined for its destruction, for which about 230 km of explosives were placed inside the large cylinder, and finally, the Jumbo was detonated and remained in pieces, which years later were taken to various museums.
Other atomic curiosities:
The experiment with Jumbo showed that you can have something that survives a nuclear explosion and perhaps this test done in the period of World War II helped in some way the development of new nuclear weapons or protections against nuclear weapons.
The Manhattan Project itself has other stories and curiosities, after all the final result happened in Asia and had the result expected by the North Americans.
- To develop the project, the US partnered with scientists from Canada and the United Kingdom.
- Even though it was actually used at the end of the war in 1945, the project began along with the world conflict in 1939, because was already studying the use of nuclear weapons and this greatly worried the USA and the other allied nations.
- The Japanese radars even identified some planes, but they did not suspect that one of them was the Enola Gay (B-29 that dropped one of the bombs). At the time, it was already common to carry out reconnaissance flights and generally these flights did not represent a direct threat to the enemy.
- The bombs detonated before touching the ground, because when detonating it while still falling, the impact of the atomic explosion is even greater.
- The name Enola Gay was given to the B-29 only after the Hiroshima nuclear bomb was dropped.
